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Carousels are bad for Accessibility

I’ve never been a fan of carousels. They’ve become a crutch for designers and clients who want to spice up a homepage presentation with something that moves. ShoulIUseACarousel was shared by a lot of folks I follow, NetMagazine did an interview with the accessibility expert who created the site.

JS: Carousels are seemingly an easy fix to two universal design problems: how do I fit so much content into so little space, and how do I decide what content is the most important? It’s easy to justify away the usability issues of a carousel when you consider the benefits of presenting multiple content pieces in such little real estate

From an information architecture perspective, Travis Lafleur provides a better alternative. In spirit, it’s very similar to the approach we used on DCUnited.com back when I was there.

Consider this simple, straightforward alternative. First, determine essential content to be featured on the page. Keep in mind the desired outcomes of the project as a whole, the mindset and goals of your users, and what actions you want them to take on the particular page. Next, prioritize. This can be as simple as assigning numbers to each item. If users notice only one thing on the page, what should that be? If they notice two, what should the second be? – and so on. If you’re having trouble prioritizing – or have too many items to promote – consider breaking the content into logical groups and spreading it over multiple pages.

Eric Runyon has the stats to back this up, click through to see how many people click beyond the first slide.

Carousels. That gem of a web feature that clients love, and many developers hate. One thing is certain, they are the darling of HigherEd. In fact, they’re loved so much, I’ve been assigned many times to retroactively add them to sites that have already been live for years. This led me ask how much are users really interacting with the carousels.